Kalgachia
| Garden of Kalgachia | |||
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| Motto: Hortus Manet (The Garden Remains) | |||
| Anthem: Kalgachia, Our Gratitude to You | |||
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| Map versions | 16.0.0 onwards | ||
| Capital | Oktavyan | ||
| Largest city | Abrek, Katarsis, Jollity, Schlepogora, Bergburg, Lithead | ||
| Official language(s) | Common Tongue (official) Benacian Yiddish Laqi Nezeni | ||
| Official religion(s) | Ketherism | ||
| Demonym | Kalgachi | ||
| - Adjective | Kalgachi | ||
| Government | Cryptocratic Hierchthony | ||
| - Executive | Council of Perfecti | ||
| - Chairman | Karin Bai | ||
| - Legislature | Council of Perfecti, Lord Lieutenants' Council | ||
| Establishment | 143 Anno Libertatis (1649 AN; June 7th 2017) | ||
| Area | ~720,000 sq.km | ||
| Population | 19,214,953: 18,499,953 in Kalgachia proper 255,000 in the Upland Confederation 242,000 in Northbloom 130,000 in Lepidopterum 88,000 in Lapivril | ||
| Active population | - | ||
| Currency | Kalgarrand | ||
| Calendar | |||
| Time zone(s) | CMT -10 | ||
| Mains electricity | |||
| Driving side | left | ||
| Track gauge | |||
| National website | - | ||
| National forum | - | ||
| National animal | Capra Benacianus (Benacian ibex) Tyrannocricetus aliger (Tee-al) | ||
| National food | Mutton Roast Goat Cheese Bliny | ||
| National drink | Stalemate Gin Schlepogorskaya Vodka | ||
| National tree | Juniperus Litovinus (Litovine juniper) | ||
| Abbreviation | KAL | ||
The Garden of Kalgachia is a territory located in the western interior of Benacia. It was established by refugees from the collapse of surrounding Minarboria and practices an evolution of that empire's belief system known as Ketherism. Historical processes before and during Kalgachia's emergence have made it into a multi-ethnic state whose combination of peoples, by gradual state-incentivised interbreeding, are slowly blending into a distinct Kalgachi population.
Kalgachia is one of Micras' few landlocked nations, occupying the entirety of the Octavian mountain range and administering a number of adjoining protectorates. The harsh topography of the country - along with a comprehensively-developed government and civil society - have assured its survival as a sovereign state through the post-Minarborian anarchy, a succession of belligerent Shirerithian governments and the continental tumult associated with the Kalirion Fracture. Kalgachia's relative insulation from the latter, owed to its early severance from Shirerithian power structures and the background status imposed by its geography within Micras' overly-thalassocratic geopolitical scene, places it among the better-established Benacian states in terms of regime continuity and has allowed it to cultivate an expansive, multifaceted and layered society with minimal degradation by domestic political upheavals. Building upon the foundation of religious unity and civilisational identity established by the Minarborians, Kalgachi authorities in more recent times have sought to advance the nation's economic resilience and national living standard when conditions beyond its frontiers allow - this is pursued through a 'flywheel policy' of frenzied spurts of foreign trade and internal development during times of continental stability, in order to weather out the periodic disruption of Kalgachia's foreign interests by neighbouring states as they are afflicted by bouts of collapse and/or rabid aggression.
This selective isolationism is further informed by the philosophical inheritances of the Minarborian era; namely the Ketherist faith, the 'Rossheim Doctrine' of unabashed self-interest and a temporal-secessionist emphasis on the memetic immune function, bound together and vindicated in the eyes of its proponents by long and ongoing historical experience. Such traditions have led Kalgachia's societal elite to consider themselves not only a nation state but an entirely seperate civilisational space, its creed of gentle cultivation standing at odds with the idolised and normalised state of interminable conflict which has been the prevailing force in Micran affairs since distant antiquity.
Geography and Climate
Topography
Kalgachia's topography is predominantly mountainous, this relief being most pronounced around Mount Octavian and its surrounding peaks which are untraversable without climbing equipment and remain frozen throughout the year. A similar but smaller area exists in Kalgachia's northwest which is capped by the country's second-highest mountain, the Splatterhorn. Between these summits run a series of steep ridges which form Kalgachia's central spine, following a rough east-west course whose western reaches are frequently broken or twisted by their position on a corner of the Central Benacian Subduction Boundary. This area has a moderate level of seismic activity, with regular recorded tremors and a profusion of geothermal springs whose heat energy is widely exploited for the generation of electrical power. From its central heights, Kalgachia's landscape becomes steadily less steep and less high towards the national frontier although this trend is occasionally broken by localised sub-ranges and ancient volcanic plugs, especially in the east. Elsewhere, domed summits and deep valleys predominate along with short escarpments and gorges.
Weather
Being at the boundary of two continental weather systems, Kalgachia's climate is violently variable. During the summer it is dominated by temperate, maritime weather originating from the southern shores of the Cosimo Sea which invariably cause heavy rainfall to the south of Kalgachia's central heights and a more pleasantly dry mildness in the north, although the latter's region's rain shadow effect has a deleterious effect on agricultural yields and compels a strict adherence to dryland farming methods.
During the winter months the Cosimo weather system retreats toward the Micran equator, drawing into its place a bone-chilling arctic cold from the Amokolian tundra and coating Kalgachia in varying depths of snow. The blocking presence of the Kalgachi highlands moderates the worst of this icy blast in the Kalgachi south, extending both ends of that region's growing season by months in comparison with the frozen north.
The rivers of Kalgachia are highly variable in flow rate according to season - this cyclical transition between feeble trickle and raging rapids makes them practically unnavigable to boats and freshwater fish alike, although some lowland stretches will permit passage by sufficiently-skilled canoeists.
Biomic Engineering
Due to its rough topography, difficult climate and provincial isolation from the various powers which have nominally governed it throughout history, Kalgachia's flora was originally limited to patches of coniferous lowland forest and wind-stunted scrub - the most famous of the latter being Kalgachia's official plant, the juniper - but the biomic legacy of the Deep Singers of Minarboria, along with subsequent initiatives by the Kalgachi government, have had a transformative effect upon Kalgachia's south, its frontier regions and its river valleys. The Kalgachi southwest, being a stronghold of the Deep Singers and their descendant genotypes, has been cultivated in the fashion of a 'forest garden' since the Minarborian era - in this region, generations of folk knowledge have created a patchwork of timber forest mixed with species bearing fruit, nuts and other wild edibles, all selected for sufficient hardiness to survive the Kalgachi winter and yield food and material from terrain previously considered barren.
Although cultural and climatic conditions in the rest of Kalgachia prevent a wholesale adoption of southwestern agricultural practices, the lower stretches of rivers nationwide are lined with irrigated and intensively-worked arable land, overlooked by highland scrub which is grazed by hardy sheep and goats. The imperative of feeding Kalgachia's population of over eighteen million people with severely limited reserves of farmland has caused every possible scrap of tillable soil and pasture to be exploited to its fullest potential.
The patchy forest of Kalgachia's frontier regions has been linked into a single belt by a government forestry programme, for the dual purpose of increasing the national timber reserves and providing shelter for refugees and resistance fighters in wartime. Following the example and advice of Kalgchia's southwestern agriculturalists, care has been taken to maintain diversity between tree species for resistance to disease, pestilence and/or hostile deployment of chemical defoliants. The very edge of this immense forest belt, upon the national frontier itself, is lined with 'predatory flora' of genetically-engineered Deep Singer origin (most notoriously the Dreadnettle, Sharpshooter Primrose and Shrapnel Lily) which is maintained and contained by Kalgachi border guards. As part of this 'biomic minefield', sections of the Kalgachi frontier are also designated reserves for hazardous engineered fauna, most notably the feared Tyrannocricetus aliger. These zones have been maintained even since portions of territory beyond the frontier became Kalgachi protectorates.
Origins
For a much fuller account, see the History of Kalgachia.
The Kalgachi state emerged from the ruins of Minarboria by the confluence of five fortuitous factors:
- The general concentration of Minarboria's post-collapse refugee flows toward the Octavian highlands to escape the depredations of bandits and Tee-als;
- The inclusion of critically-skilled bureaucrats, scientists and engineers from Sansabury and &zeter within those refugee flows;
- The sense of civilisational responsibility assumed by late-Minarborian church clergy in the absence of their collapsed government, preserving a modicum of social cohesion and assuring the continuity of the Garden as the prevailing moral reference;
- The initiative and coordination of these authoritative remnants in recruiting, ideologically motivating and securing payment for emergent (predominantly Laqi) warbands to defend them rather than plunder them;
- The relative inertia of surrounding powers in exploiting the regional governance vacuum for their own territorial and ideological gain.
The initial proclamation of the state called Kalgachia [1] covered little more than the most inaccessible spine of the Octavian mountain range, a barren and blasted place where human habitation was only possible by hewing underground homes into the local granite. It became rapidly clear, however, that the throng of incoming refugees was outgrowing the marginal agricultural carrying capacity of the territory and outpacing the ability of their hosts to construct underground habitations for them. The fitter segment of this shuffling horde - rather smaller than might be assumed after the perils and privations of their journey - were duly armed and directed to establish a new border incorporating the entirety of the Octavian mountain range whose lower hill country permitted the grazing of animals and crop cultivation irrigated by meltwater streams, along with a coniferous timber reserve for the construction of surface dwellings. From this verdant fringe came the ability to both sustain those who dwelt upon it, and to accumulate surpluses for the sustenance of the more mountainous Kalgachi hinterland. This dynamic established, the material foundation for the survival of the Kalgachi nation was assured.
Religion
For more, see Ketherism.
Kalgachia's belief system, Ketherism, began as an agglomeration of those eremitic and monastic sects which had been tolerated with disdain by the Minarborian church, but whose teachings gained new popularity in the wake of that church's collapse. Indeed the conditions of the time all but demanded that the early Kalgachi organise themselves in a monastic fashion, attending to their own needs in small fortified groups and enduring an ascetic existence before any thoughts of the wider Garden could be considered. In time however, these monasteries - and the churches built in subjection to them - were networked together by the new sub-surface elite and went on to form the basis for Kalgachia's rhizomic government.
The Ketherist belief system is not so much based on new revelation, as on several long-running undercurrents of Minarborealist belief that bubbled to the surface of the popular consciousness once the old church was no longer around to suppress them. While the Ketherists retain the old Deep Singer conception of one's own homeland and social structure as a 'Garden' to be 'cultivated' in a horticulurally-minded and holistic manner, its purpose has been somewhat revised. No longer is it the goal of the faithful to expand the Garden across the physical world - such horticultural absolutism is considered a misdirection of effort in an inherently corrupted material realm and a dangerous folly which grew the Empire of Minarboria beyond its telluric carrying capacity and brought it to a tragically premature end. Instead, hold the Ketherists, one's life in the material world must be devoted to 'keeping a good Garden' for one's immediate kin and countrymen, with any expansion of the faith being little more than a product of one's shining example, unforced by proselytisation or territorial conquest and ultimately irrelevant to the salvation of the faithful - such salvation only being possible through one's personal enterprise and agency in discovering, appreciating and converting to the faith independently of outside pressures.
The Ketherist conception of the physical universe is that of a fouled and tainted precipitate, the fulminatory contact point resulting from an invasion of the Garden Ketheric - an immaterial plane of pure harmonic symbiosis (but not necessarily order) whence all human souls originate and yearn for reconciliation - by the Wastes of Irredeemable Corruption, an alien and predatory morass which draws its energy from the generation of pain and suffering and must continually bloat outwards to avoid cannibalising itself. Each realm has its agents, which manifest themselves in varying forms and degrees of potency in the physical universe created by their contact. The furious war between these agents has progressed to the point that those from the Wastes of Irredeemable Corruption whose chief weapons are fear, cynicism, avarice and anger in the hearts of humanity, have come to prevail in the heavens - whereas those from the Garden Ketheric who imbue the faithful with jollity, wisdom, charity, beauty and calm fortitude, are strongest in the cores of the densest physical bodies such as stars and planets. This goes some way to explaining the popularity of underground habitation in Kalgachia which, all defensive necessity aside, is considered the most proximate to the Garden Ketheric. This orientation of spiritual polarity has presented difficulties with Kalgachia's constituent languages which present the superior, the exalted, the lofty, the ascendant and indeed the very name of Ketherism itself as contradictory to their origins in the virtuous depths - this being considered one of the most corrupting and insidious deceptions yet wrought upon humanity from the Wastes of Irredeemable Corruption. Efforts to avoid or substitute offending terms in the Kalgachi vernacular have gained popularity within some halls of church and state through an engineered dialect known as K-Prime in which, for example, a statement such as "my superiors at KDF High Command are at the top of the operational hierarchy" would be articulated as "my seniors at KDF Deep Command are at the root of the operational hierchthony" (although in other offices such language is mocked as the buzzword-laden dross of careerist sycophants).
Ketherism does not hold absolute import in the existence of gods, although the most powerful agents of the Garden Ketheric are freely recognised as deities of a sort. The most divine being to exist is considered to be the Shrub-God Minarbor, from whom the Empire of Minarboria was named - but unlike the Minarborians who considered Him to be Shrub-God before all, the Church of Kalgachia proclaims the possibility of Minarbor's divinity being equalled or surpassed by some other being in the future. Posthuman authority figures of Minarborian history such as the Empress Lyssansa, Fleurette the Thoughtseeker and Lord Toastypops also enjoy quasi-divine status in Ketherism through their appellation as 'Salvators'.
Government
For a tabulated guide to Kalgachi bureaucracy, see the Chthonarchotrix.
Central Governance
Supreme power in Kalgachia is vested in the Council of Perfecti, a body of nine individuals who reside deep underground for the ostensible purpose of maintaining a meditative state insulated from the petty distractions of the surface world. Persistent rumours and legends exist of individual Perfecti visiting the surface in disguise, to obtain first-hand experience of the nation's condition and circumvent overly sycophantic, pessimistic or otherwise agenda-driven presentations of the situation by the Kalgachi bureaucracy on whom they officially rely for information. Whether this is a genuine phenomenon or merely a rumour spread to keep the national bureaucracy in line is unknown.
The membership of the Council of Perfecti is thought to change over time. The identities of serving Perfecti are never disclosed officially although some occupants of the Council have been deduced beyond reasonable doubt by astute observers - the sudden and premature disappearance of noted senior officials from public life without an official explanation is generally accepted as a sign of either their liquidation for some unexpected infraction, or their appointment to the Council.
Each of the Perfecti holds a ministerial brief, exercised through the following institutions:
The Troglodyti
The Troglodyti are an occult order descended from the University of &zeter Arcane Society, a student coven of the Minarborian era. Their intiates, known as Troglodytes or 'Trogs' in informal discourse, tend to operate hidden in the plain sight of normal Kalgachi life with a small elite of deep adepts dwelling permanently underground. According to the supreme law of Kalgachia, the Oktavyan Code, the official brief of the Troglodyti is "the esoteric salvation of the Kalgachi people" although how they go about this task is not well understood beyond their inner membership; notably they appear not to recognise a boundary between materialist science and arcane working, freely straddling the two disciplines in the manner of their alchemist forebears.
Although the Troglodyti are thought to lack a leadership in the commonly-understood sense, the inevitable deference of initiates toward their more learned adepts favours those who administer Lapivril - a small, autonomous and Troglodyte-run protectorate of Kalgachia located deep in the lower lithosphere. Over time this has blurred the roles of protectorate administrator and master hierophant to the extent that such individuals enjoy de facto control of the Troglodyti on both a technocratic and thaumaturgical level.
It is rumoured that the order is divided into two factions, the 'Chaotes' and the 'Grimoirists', each grudgingly tolerating the other's presence to fill holes in their own practice. The Chaotes are noted for their proficiency in back-engineering and experimenting with arcane workings from every known esoteric tradition on Micras - including those originating from avowed enemies of Ketherism and the Kalgachi people - whilst the Grimoirists are quietly respected for their dogged persistence in collating the resulting scraps of workable practice into a corpus of uniquely Kalgachi arcana upon the alchemical-energetic foundation originally laid by the Minarborians.
The Church of Kalgachia
For more about Kalgachi religion, see Ketherism.
The Church of Kalgachia is the official state church and the most powerful public influence on Kalgachi society, tasked with maintaining Kalgachia's spiritual rigour through a wide network of monasteries and their subject churches. The institutions also serve as nodes of provincial government in which the Church wields immense power, although this more secular work is delegated to a cadre of dedicated officials. This fusion of the spiritual and municipal is a legacy of the belated effort to prevent the collapse of Minarboria, wherein the clergy as natural founts of authority were envisaged as auxiliary government officials in the event of central government collapse - it has been argued that the system's survival into Kalgachia represents the successful implementation of Minarboria's government continuity protocols in geographically-limited form, although the theological evolution of Minarborealism into Ketherism suggests that any notion of a return to the soft imperialism of Minarboria's ruling State Arbors has been quietly abandoned.
The Church of Kalgachia is also tasked with the training and arming of partisans from their congregation as a precaution against armed invasion. In peacetime these partisans, numbering around 3.7 million, effectively constitute the Church's paramilitary wing. The Church's moral clout, administrative power and armed strength empowers it to act as a police force and judiciary on a local level. In addition the Church's near-monopoly on land ownership has allowed it to dominate the Kalgachi economy through the stipulation that all businesses wishing to acquire dedicated premises must submit to Church ownership before land is made available to them. In this manner the Church seeks to systematically and directly restrain the zero-sum predationism inherent to the capitalistic worldview and the 'pecuniary archon' which instils it in the hearts of the innocent. Regular exposés of 'financial irregularities' by specific Church clergy in the national news media, complete with lurid accounts their visits to the casinos and bordellos of Kalgachia's upscale ski resorts, suggests that the ground-level implementation of this regulatory aspect has not been entriely successful.
The Church professes to keep its immense power in check by retaining many aspects of the old Minarborian liturgy and doctrine - for those within and without the institution it emphasises jollity, politeness and patience as the chief weapons against the archonic cynicism which rages beyond Kalgachia's borders.
The Kalgachi Defence Force
For more, see the Military of Kalgachia.
The Kalgachi Defence Force (KDF) are Kalgachia's professional military, born from the personnel and military production capacity recovered from the collapse of Minarboria. KDF doctrine is heavily task-optimised to the defence of Kalgachi territory against invasion by larger developed powers, along with the containment of rogue biota such as Tyrannocricetus aliger. The prevalence of gravimetric vehicles and full-spectrum surveillance assets around Benacia is perceived to have completely removed the defensive advantage of Kalgachia's mountain topography, requiring new solutions for national defence such as the location of all military infrastructure underground, a heavily dispersed command and logistics structure, the mass production and company-level deployment of hypersonic kinetic weaponry, the aggressive maintenance of an real-time intelligence picture, precautions against electromagnetic and infrared emission which freely extend into the obsessive, and the multilayered cryptographic scrambling of communication data and active sensor signals.
It is anticipated that in wartime, the entire surface layer of Kalgachia's C2 web will be wiped out by targeted strikes from a large and technologically-advanced adversary, requiring its delivery in a purely preparatory form in peacetime - most critically in the period of political tension preceding the outbreak of hostilities - so that field units, autonomous by necessity, can perform as effectively as possible during the actual fighting. As a result the role of the KDF junior officer is notoriously demanding, requiring an immensely detailed knowledge of Kalgachi geography and social composition, the weapons and tactics of Kalgachia's military adversaries and countermeasures against them, coordination with friendly units through Bayesian inference without direct communication or command coordination, unit-level sensor conealment both static and mobile, re-infiltration of enemy occupation zones, swarming to contact, dispersal from contact, and the necessary fieldcraft to weather out long periods of concealed isolation. Due to its complexity, time spent by officer graduates in this role is relatively long while subsequent promotions are relatively fast.
The KDF's technological composition is jarringly dissonant - while most of its units are reliant upon pack horses to negotiate Kalgachia's mountainous terrain and relative sparsity of roads (which in any event would be deathtraps in wartime), its inheritance of Minarborian rocket and electronic warfare technology allows it to field a first-rank air defence and theatre ballistic missile capability - although, as concluded by the KDF's Minarborian forebears, fast air assets are considered insufficiently survivable in wartime to be worth any great investment. Mobile firepower and transport is provided mainly by Whirdlebirb helicopters which move among the radar clutter of Kalgachia's deep valleys in lieu of mechanised ground units, the latter being considered unsuited to mountain warfare in a hydrocarbon-poor environment and almost entirely absent from the KDF as a consequence.
The Prefects
- Don't think.
- If you think, then don't speak.
- If you think and speak, then don't write.
- If you think, speak and write, then don't sign.
- If you think, speak, write and sign, then don't be surprised.
—"Joke" regarding the Prefects, Circa 1691 AN
The Prefects (not to be confused with the Perfecti) are Kalgachia's internal security service tasked with immigration and customs, counterintelligence, anti-corruption operations, organised crime investigation and the ultimate enforcement of the Oktavyan Code whose provisions they enjoy almost unlimited power to interpret. With the exception of their uniformed Border Guard Service, the Prefects tend to work out of the public eye and because Due Process does not exist in Kalgachia on a national level, their entire chain of operation from initial investigation to corrective action (which they are fully remitted to take without judicial oversight) is similarly hidden. Their culture of occlusion in this regard presents, in theory at least, a natural limit to the extent of their operations.
The simple and sudden disappearance of those perceived to be a national security risk, after a period of intensive covert surveillance and investigation, is the most notorious modus operandi of the Prefects. Contrary to popular belief, the organisation frowns upon the gratuitous rough-handling or torture of detainees as an unwarranted act of flattery toward the miscreant and an indulgence of archonic forces which ultimately derive equal sustenance and pleasure from all human suffering, whether it be that of servants or enemies. Instead the Prefects pride themselves upon silence and unceremonious efficiency in the removal of troublesome elements where possible - individuals too publically prominent to be removed covertly are denigrated with hit pieces planted in the Kalgachi media - usually drawing from a 'control file' full of compromising material which is gathered on every public figure in Kalgachia regardless of their loyalty to the state - until their reputation is sufficiently destroyed that they can be 'disappeared' without public consternation. Sufficiently savvy members of the Kalgachi élite who fall from grace in this way will often elect to foreshorten the inevitable conclusion of this process by committing suicide (the level of surveillance directed at them by that point generally precludes their escape from the country).
The Prefects are also rumoured to be heavily involved in manipulating clan disputes among the restive Laqi provinces of Kalgachia's east - a region where the autonomy of armed parish partisan units is often abused to pursue ancient grievances against neighbouring parishes, and occasionally against the Kalgachi government itself. The Prefects' exploitation of the former phenomenon to eliminate the latter has been described as a fine art; any aspiring warlord who makes the mistake of declaring against Kalgachia's central government invariably finds his parish assailed by a horde of well-paid and ideologically frenzied neighbours, selected for their pre-existing grievances against the traitor and armed with all manner of weapons from the humble pickaxe handle to military issue anti-tank weapons and flamethrowers. Rumours exist of entire parishes being wiped from the map by this method, presented by the media as a mere 'tribal disagreement' if reported at all.
The Directorate of Public Works
The Directorate of Public Works (DPW) is responsible for Kalgachia's civil infrastructure, much of which is located entirely underground beneath thick mountain granite. As a result the DPW have come to specialise in tunnel boring, ventilation and geothermal power. The Directorate is fully remitted to maintain and operate its more vital creations such as the electrical power grid, transport network, postal service and telephone system.
In the first four dacades of Kalgachia's history the DPW operated in a constant state of marginal overstretch, being committed to a hideously resource-intensive capital construction project of some kind - namely:
- Deep-level central governance and military command rhizomes (145-147 AL)
- Deep-level factory spaces for strategic industries. (147-150 AL)
- Three underground railways linking the cities of Katarsis, Jollity and Bergburg in a triangle (150-154 AL)
- A constellation of mountain fortresses for the Kalgachi Defence Force (154-166 AL)
- Mid-lithosphere excavations and infrastructure installation in support of Project Newrad (beginning 166 AL)
- A constellation of 60 medium-range ballistic missile bases for the Kalgachi Defence Force (170-188 AL)
- An ill-fated railway linking Kasterburg with Transbatavia (183-186 AL)
- A railway linking Katarsis to Fort Ermingander, Northbloom (200 AL)
In more recent times the priorities of the Directorate have pivoted to the enhancement of its existing assets, leading to a gradual improvement in such metrics as telephone service coverage and train punctuality. Some capital projects in the meantime have been contracted out to foreign entities, such as the expansion of Gravelbottom Airport in 193 AL and the construction of the Tealsburrow Railway in 222 AL.
The Directorate of Labour and Economic Planning
For more, see the Economy of Kalgachia.
The Directorate of Labour and Economic Planning (DLEP) played a critical role in Kalgachia's early history, organising an influx of migrants and goods caravans into a coherent labour force and manufacturing complex which established the rudiments of a social safety net and spared those early settlers from a premature death by starvation or exposure. The DLEP's modern-day brief states that the very notion of unconditional loyalty is degenerate archonic poison, and that no Kalgachi can be expected to stand in the defence of their state unless it can maintain proof of its material and moral merits in the eyes of the citizen beholder (an imperative made more pointed by the fact that the Church, in its alleged wisdom, has seen fit to instruct a full quarter of the Kalgachi population in the art of guerilla warfare and insurrection). This translates to a requirement to ensure a standard of living at or above the Benacian average, priority being given to the less ideologically-anchored segments of the population. In practice this has resulted in a profusion of obese Laqi 'partisan commanders' cruising the streets of Schlepogora in imported Roller's Choice limousines whilst green-skinned and threadbare grandmothers in the forests of Lithead are reduced to subsistence foraging, nonetheless grateful to their homeland for being only state in Benacia which reliably refrains from slaughtering their Nezeni people.
The DLEP maintains a standing Labour Corps to assist other organs of state in special projects or emergency relief efforts. The Labour Corps is commonly seen as the last-ditch employment option in Kalgachia, with much of its membership being composed of small-time criminals supplied under sentence from the Church of Kalgachia's innumerable Parish tribunals. Wayward labourers do however have the oppurtunity to advance themselves into the Corps' cadre of skilled labourers and foremen, whose trades are marginally more respectable and afford them the skills to provide their services privately after leaving the Corps.
The DLEP also operates a large swathe of Kalgachia's industrial and financial sector as unitary enterprises; most critically the Reserve Bank of Kalgachia and a majority stake in the Octavian Import-Export Corporation, the latter allowing the Directorate to augment - and in places completely supplant - the activities of Kalgachia's diplomatic corps.
The Directorate of Education and Outreach
For more, see the Media of Kalgachia.
The Directorate of Education and Outreach (DEO) oversees Kalgachia's education system, cultural initiatives, research and development capability, statistics collection and mass media. Freedom of thought is encouraged within the DEO, although its services to the general population are coordinated with other organs of state to keep its output 'on message'. The DEO is second only to the Church of Kalgachia in preserving within its organisational culture the nannying paternalism which characterised the government of Minarboria - the Directorate motto, "Your Gnosis Is Our Business" promotes across Kalgachi schools and media organs the creed that the knowledge of the Kalgachi teacher or journalist is beyond question, second only to work of the ordained clergy in their righteous quest to inform, enlighten and entertain.
The DEO was involved in the global cinemetic renaissance which inexplicably exploded across Micras in the year 171 AL, responding to the works of Caputia, Kasterburg, Nova England, the the Florian Republic and Shireroth by pumping resources into Kalgachia's own modest film industry.
The DEO is also responsible for running the children's camp known as the Urchagin and the GAHDN data-sharing network.
The Directorate of Health and Public Welfare
The Directorate of Health and Public Welfare (DHPW) is responsible for its Kalgachia's healthcare provision and notably, the agriculture and food supply chain - this latter element being considered of existential rather than commercial importance due to Kalgachia's limited reserves of arable land and pasture. Along with the DLEP the hard pressed doctors, agronomists and dietitians of the DHPW did much to prevent Kalgachia's early migration flows from turning into a sewer of famine and disease.
Although much of the advanced bio-engineering capability enjoyed by Minarboria was lost after that empire's collapse, the DHPW have retained certain elements such as life-extending telomerase therapy and almost-limitless abilities in transfusion and transplantation, greatly assisted by medical schools in the Lepidopterum Protectorate whose Deep Singer inhabitants are renowned for such expertise. Rumours of a DHPW facility maintaining live samples from Minarboria's advanced bio-weapons programme under the pretext of 'civilian research' have been consistently denied.
The DHPW's Sportive Development Bureau has grown from its origins in promoting physical fitness to become Kalgachia's national governing body for sport (with some exceptions). Along with the administration of the Octavian League the Bureau has met with particular success in coaching Kalgachi fencing teams - drawn as they are from a deep cultural well of Laqis, Kossars, and the university fencing clubs of Oktavyan and Bergburg who inherited their craft from the student Mensur fraternities of &zeter.
Despite its extent, the budgetary burden incurred by the DHPW is partially offset by lucrative exports from Goodvial, its subsidiary pharmaceutical enterprise.
The Directorate of the Tumultuous Wastes
The Directorate of the Tumultuous Wastes (DTW - named for the Ketherist conception of the lands beyond Kalgachia) is Kalgachia's most junior organ of state, concerned with foreign relations. Like its old Minarborian counterpart, the Third State Arbor, the DTW is essentially a purgatory for inexperienced or disgraced civil servants who are tasked with the unpleasant job of interacting with foreign powers as a form of initiation and/or penance. This also has the benefit of flushing out the less reliable bureaucrats by incentivising them to 'go native' in foreign climes long before they have been promoted to more sensitive positions in the Kalgachi state. Because of this, however, the ranks of the DTW enjoy a certain special cameraderie and a relative absence of bloated egos which allows its work to be carried out with a high degree of efficiency and informality.
The constituent organs of the DTW are notoriously opaque in their operations; the Directorate's diplomatic corps substantially overlaps with the Octavian Import-Export Corporation and its analytical branch, the Field Research Office, blends almost seamlessly into the KDF Military Intelligence Staff. Such involvement from deeper state organs and quasi-commercial entities is thought to be an expedient compensation for the DTW's relatively-poor talent pool.
The DTW's diplomatic style is marked by an informal brevity of discourse and a tendency to circumvent the customary diplomatic portals of foreign governments in favour of direct approaches to the political factions, commercial entities or other special interests involved in the matters Kalgachia wishes to negotiate. In this manner Kalgachia successfully handled the multiple, simultaneous and contradictory foreign policies put forward by Shireroth's factionalised bureaucracy prior to the Kalirion Fracture, established an active trade relationship with Batavia through the Iron Company long before the arrangement was codified in a bilateral treaty and interfaces with effectively the entire continent of Eura through ESB.
Extraordinary Grand Councils
During events important enough to require a re-examination of Kalgachia's strategic direction - usually of some religious significance - the Perfecti will sometimes convene an Extraordinary Grand Council (EGC) consisting of themselves, the Lords Lieutenant, the Resectors of the Church, the General Staff and the Lords Protector. EGCs are purely advisory bodies which remain within the Perfecti's absolute authority; their purpose is to obtain a faster and more coordinated pooling of the wider Kalgachi leadership than is possible through normal channels of communication.
During Kalgachia's history, five EGCs have been convened:
- In 187 AL to discuss the first reanimation of Lord Toastypops since Minarboria's demise (Lord Toastypops himself was present).
- In 210 AL to discuss the return of the Deep Singers to the surface at Lepidopterum (led by their progenitorial specimen, the Broodmother) after their near-extinction at the hands of a mineral pathogen, in the context of the Black Legions' march toward Kalgachia's frontiers.
- In 226 AL to discuss the torpor of Lord Toastypops and the Broodmother in the context of Kalgachia's economic boom and Benacia's congelation into two discernible spheres of influence following the Kalirion Fracture.
- In 1680 AN to affirm the post-Yastrebian political order in the aftermath of the Second Amokolian War and to discuss the revision of Kalgachia's long-standing defence and security doctrines.
- In 1684 AN to repudiate the chairmanship of Gen. Pommerovsky and his allies in the aftermath of the Inner-Benacian Conflict and the subsequent Treaty of Gloomburg.
Provincial Governance
The area of reponsibility between the Perfecti and the Church is delegated to the Lords Lieutenant, of which there is one for each of Kalgachia's seven Lieutenancies. The Lords Lieutenant, coordinating their work through the Lord Lieutenants' Council, are the most senior government officials to appear in public, often making speeches and announcing policy on behalf of the Perfecti. This alone gives them considerable powers to interpret and apply the Perfecti's will in their respective Lieutenancies, although in reality this power is limited by the double scrutiny of the Perfecti's own informants and that of the Church whose acquiescence is essential to implement policy on the ground.
The Lieutenancies of Kalgachia are divided into Marches, administered by the Church of Kalgachia from monasteries. These in turn are divided into Parishes, administered from churches. The Abbots of the Marches and Credents of the Parishes, through their subordinate Proctors, wield considerable power on a local level upto and including that of extrajudicial property seizure or summary execution, although consistently heavy-handed church clerics run the risk of their actions drawing the attention of the Church or the Prefects and backfiring catastrophically.
Kalgachia has four adjoining protectorates: Northbloom to the north, Lepidopterum to the southwest, the Upland Confederation to the south and Lapivril somewhere beneath the western mountains. Unlike the Lieutenancies, Kalgachia's protectorates are not considered integral parts of the Kalgachi nation and the protectorate administrations are devoted almost entirely to the provision of security and the sustenance of existing indigenous life.
Domestic Policy
In the administration of Kalgachia's internal affairs, the official line of the government might be interpreted thus:
"It is the duty of the Kalgachi state - as mandated from the Garden Ketheric and confirmed by its wordly emissary, Lord Toastypops - to maintain for the Kalgachi people a state of perpetual jollity, by which they might fully and finally shake off the parasite of archonic influence and be redeemed from the face of this tainted world. It is the will of the Garden that every action and achievement of the state must be ultimately be directed toward this goal, insulated from all other motivations."
Whereas the more technocratic position, expressed within the government itself, might be interpreted thus:
"While coercion of an unwilling populace by force is fruitful in the short term, such a system is burdensome over a long period as compliance must forever be obtained independently of the popular will. The infusion of society with jollity through the betterment of their conditions entails a heavy investment at first, but requires less management over time as the popular will invariably aligns itself with the objectives of the state and instinctively acts in the service of those objectives even when the state is absent. The archonic states, led as they are by parasitic supranational elites, sustain their people at the minimum level required to prevent rebellion while appropriating the rest - we must sustain our people at a level which ensures their maximum possible devotion, for all segments of the Kalgachi population have been set by history toward a shared fate. In these conditions the exploitation of any single class endangers the integrity of all classes, much as a stress upon any single organ emperils the whole body."
This close alignment of idealistic and cynical positions, sharing the imperative of jollity as they do, is arguably the energising force of Kalgachi governance - those who are indifferent to religious appeals can at least be made to recognise that all segments of Kalgachi society have an equal share of skin in the game and that any act of exploitation, parasitism or social antagonism, directed either way along the social hierchthony, will invariably backfire upon the offender.
The centrepiece of this policy is the interbreeding of Kalgachia's contituent population groups into a single uniquely Kalgachi ethnos, incentivised by legally-mandated positive discrimination policies for such individuals and their parents. The policy has met with some opposition from the followers of Lepidopterum's 'Sixth Law' hardliners and from the Pesakhnik Dynasty of Bergburg, for whom the homogenisation of the Kalgachi genome threatens the cultivated bloodlines of the Deep Singers and the Tribe of Jacob respectively. Elsewhere the policy has been met with with lukewarm engagement by the Laqi of Kalgachia's east whilst the Lywallers of the northwest and a portion of the Nezeni population in Lithead are more enthusiastic; opinion among the Nezeni is split between the Lepidopterans' position that the mongrelisation of the Kalgachi peoples (including the very existence of the Nezeni) is a backward adulteration of the optimised Deep Singer genome, and those who celebrate the oppurtunity to spread some portion of that genome through the entire Kalgachi population.
Foreign Policy
Kalgachi foreign policy emphasises the sovereignty of national populations and rejects the intrusion of supranational power structures into global affairs - citing, in typically horticultural terms, the vulnerability of monocultures in failing to firewall the spread of cascading societal failures through the wider fabric of humanity. This has naturally set Kalgachia at odds with imperially-inclined powers - most notoriously Shireroth prior to the Kalirion Fracture. Kalgachia's anti-imperialist policy has also brought it into political and economic conflict with the Bassarid Empire although the more tellurocratic imperialism of the Jingdaoese on faraway Apollonia is sufficiently tolerable to permit continued relations from Kalgachia, building upon relations established by Minarboria during the Sheng era.
Kalgachia subscribes broadly to the Goltz Doctrine formulated by Ashkenatza and implemented during the Amokolian War, which holds that all Benacian territory should be ruled from Benacian capitals. The Kalgachi position, however, is distinct in making this objective conditional upon a state of continental multipolarity - while a constellation of exclusively Benacian powers is preferable, it is considered better for parts of Benacia to be ruled by off-continent powers than for all of Benacia to be ruled by a single Benacian power. The implementation of this policy, in the form of humanitarian aid to nearby Jingdaoese-controlled territories, almost brought Kalgachia into open warfare with Shireroth during the War of Lost Brothers; Kalgachia's commitment to the Goltz Doctine has been affirmed in more recent times by support for Batavia, Kasterburg, Tellia and a general contentment at the fragmentation arising from the Kalirion Fracture.
In particular relationships with the Batavian Confederation, and with Nova England further afield, are essential in converting Kalgachia's mined gold reserves and manufactured exports into a vast stockpile of raw materials imported from foreign markets.
The Republic of Inner Benacia and their ultimate conqueror, the Unified Governorates, were the only states to have been involved in armed conflict with Kalgachia; the former conflict was limited to the primate behaviour of Inner Benacian tribal leaders against the Kalgachi frontier and corresponding retaliation whilst the latter conflict - characterised by ambushes and raiding actions with occasional massed airstrikes which congealed into artillery exchanges and low-intensity trench warfare - arose from a Kalgachi occupation of the Upland Confederation to displace a territorial claim of the UGB and establish a forward defence of Lepidopterum's Deep Singer population against the advancing Nationalist-Humanists, an operation which was ultimately successful and ended with the Slavegate Convention. The second round of conflict between the Garden and the Unified Governorates ended in a wholly less satisfactory manner - having continued long enough for the material superiority enjoyed by the UGB by virtue of its membership of the Raspur Pact to make itself manifest. The Treaty of Gloomburg obliged Kalgachia to accept the garrisoning of its protectorates by the Black Legions under the guise of a condominium whilst the increasing influence of Benacia Command was made manifest by its fortified legation complex situated at Fastenborg Keep, the operation of the Pachadsberg Special Recreational Zone outside of any effective government oversight, and the execution of 47 KDF officers hastily convicted of what a special tribunal termed "treasonable correspondence with a third power".
In spite of being compromised in many respects by the terms of the Treaty, Kalgachia nonetheless strove to maintain the integrity of its sovereign borders whenever opportunity permitted, such as when the Council of the Perfecti refused a demand by Benacia Command to facilitate the transfer of forces via its territory on the way northwards to suppress an uprising in Elwynn. Not without reason, the Council surmised that were it to allow the Black Legions to enter Kalgachia proper in full force it would be impossible to get them to leave again without a far greater struggle than would be entailed by refusing them access in the first instance.
Kalgachia is a member of the Micronational Cartography Society and the Micras Treaty Organisation, although its formerly anti-imperialist policies restrained its involvement with other global organisations.
Legal System
For a record of Kalgachi legislation, see the Oktavyan Code and the Orders of Council.
The most salient characteristic of the Kalgachi legal system is its relative absence. Outside the implementation of the Oktavyan Code and the Orders of the Perfecti, jurisprudence as a discipline is largely alien to the Kalgachi concept of civil order which is mostly delivered through a rhizomic variant of the 'leader principle' exercised on the Parish level - such parochial segmentation serving in theory to limit the damage of ill-wielded power and further moderated by the Church of Kalgachia's near-monopoly over the governmental fulfilment layer along with the inalienable right of petition afforded to Kalgachi citizens (the only 'human right' codified in national law).
Although this system gives rise to a hideously mismatched patchwork of bylaws, decrees and in many cases mere verbal understandings between Kalgachia's many Parishes, it does allow for the fine optimisation of local government to suit the cultural, economic and geographical conditions in any given jurisdiction, thus averting the type of ham-fisted technocratic inflexibility which might provoke discontent among Kalgachia's many ethnic groups and make them ripe for leverage by hostile foreign powers.
Invariably, suggestions to standardise or expand Kalgachi law are met with violent opposition from the Church of Kalgachia - its theologians have repeatedly declared the concept of a formalised national judiciary to be an archonic instrument designed to dupe the population with the promise of enforcing objective fairness, whilst in reality capturing the means to enforce that fairness and denying its access by the common citizen through the gratuitous impenetrability of its procedures, ultimately limiting its utility to particularist interests who seek to entrench or advance their own position through contrived acts of barratry and contractual double-bind. The actions of the Froyalanish King Noah, both in Shireroth and Natopia, are often cited as the purest and most psychopathic distillation of that dark art and a salutary warning from history against judicial indulgences.
Enforcing the provisions of national law, and trying infractions of it, is nominally the responsibility of the Prefects who traditionally choose to proceed directly from investigation to sentence without any semblance of a formal trial beyond the procedural circulation of given cases through their occluded back offices. The enforcement of Church bylaws in the Marches and Parishes, however, is more often conducted by public tribunal for the dual purpose of reassuring and warning the more proximate citizenry. The right of defendants to be represented by advocates or lodge appeals varies by jurisdiction, as does the general tenor of proceedings and the sentences handed out - public executions would be considered horrifyingly barbaric in Katarsis or Jollity, whereas in Abrek and Schlepogora they are not only a common occurrence but a municipal event complete with music, refreshment stalls and other accoutrements of public entertainment.
The particular nature of state authority in Kalgachia, all modern political alignments aside, might be considered an inheritance from the wider Southern Benacian civilisational space which has historically drawn upon Cedro-Zurvanist concepts of the Will to Power (refined through the forthright philosophies of the House of Rossheim and the Deep Singers) as opposed to the boreal north of the continent and its Bovo-Ayrenonist creed of litigious rhetoric whose vulnerability to weaponisation by the cunning Froyalanish, among other destructive elements throughout history, continues to be ill-regarded among the Kalgachi.
Economy and Infrastructure
For more, see the Economy of Kalgachia.
Early attempts to emulate Minarboria's non-monetary command economy were found to be inefficient in the face of Kalgachia's modest resource base, and the availability of one particular resource - gold - caused it to rapidly emerge as an informal means of exchange among the population which the Perfecti found necessary to formalise and regulate, before the emergence of a capital-hoarding class and the runaway sequestration of surplus labour value sucked the Kalgachi economy dry. The result is essentially a form of state capitalism, where private enterprises are not permitted dedicated land for their operations unless they surrender their ownership and managerial oversight to an organ of state - usually the Church of Kalgachia which has the statutory monopoly on all land not claimed by other state entities. Businesses which refuse such oversight are ultimately limited to the scale of cottage industries operating from residential dwellings which themselves are rented from the state monopoly. The conversion of such dwellings into businesses is generally tolerated as long as the tenant remains in residence, even if they have reduced their habitational space to a single room or closet and given over the rest of the premises to their commercial interests.
Kalgachia's unit of currency, the Kalgarrand, consists of one troy ounce (31.1g) of pure gold. Due to their considerable value, whole Kalgarrands are rarely seen in everyday use and most coinage is adulterated with base metals into everyday denominations. The most salient example of the currency's strength is its listing on the Micras Pint Index, rivalled only by the similarly gold-minted Denarii of Nova England. The currency's private-sector role as a mode of liquidity rather than capital accumulation ensures that the majority of it is locked up in the Church or other state organs and passes only briefly through the hands of the ordinary citizen before returning to the authorities' treasuries.
The mountainous terrain of Kalgachia is not especially conducive to agriculture, and the few pockets of suitable farmland in the lower hill country of its fringes are heavily cultivated. Countermeasures against soil depletion are one of the more frenetic occupations of Kalgachia's small academic community. The husbandry of sheep and goats is more widespread, the animals being well suited to Kalgachia's profusion of scattered highland pastures. Kalgachia's geography has allowed mining, quarrying and forestry to flourish although it has conversely made exports problematic - to reach the high seas and the global market place, Kalgachi goods must be conveyed through the territory of surrounding states. Before the War of Lost Brothers the majority of Kalgachia's foreign trade was with Shireroth, mainly in the form of contractually-obliged Froyalanish labourers imported in exchange for outgoing Kalgarrand and surplus items of ex-Minarborian industrial plant. The subsequent realignment of trade toward the Port of Vines lasted until the Haifan Civil War, after which it was directed through the Batavian Confederation in collaboration with the Iron Company. In more recent times the détente established with the UGB following the Slavegate Convention, along with the assumption of power in the rump RIB by expatriate merchants from the Sovereign Confederation, has allowed for the commission of a second trade route originating in Eura and utilising that region's shipping services to exchange goods with Kalgachia via the UGB's merchant ports.
Kalgachia's roads and railways are few, but well maintained. Many of both are located underground, mainly in urban areas. Kalgachi locomotives and motor vehicles are generally powered by hybrid combustion/electrical engines to move seamlessly between surface and sub-surface routes. An established Kalgachi settlement viewed from the surface represents only part of what actually exists, the underground portion becoming greater toward Kalgachia's mountainous interior. In some of the more inhospitable areas, whole villages are carved beneath the local granite and are accessed from what appears to be a single cottage.
During Kalgachia's idealistic naissance the DPW intended to connect all of Kalgachia's major cities by entirely underground means - although this has already been achieved between the relatively-proximate cities of Bergburg, Katarsis and Jollity, the project was found to be hideously resource intensive despite the 'help' of thousands, allegedly hundreds of thousands, of bonded Froyalaners on sixteen-hour shifts whose fatality rate was scarcely better than they had suffered at the hands of Shirerithian death squads. Since the Froyalaners' emancipation into the wage-earning citizenry and the emergence of other capital projects up the DTW's list of priorities, the complete tunnel linkage of Kalgachia's population centres has steadily retreated from the threshold of viability.
It has been noted from the usual derisory quarters that the technological edge of Kalgachia's economic development is jarringly uneven - the alchemical cadres of Lapivril have devised world-leading methods to transmute granite and magma into agricultural produce and all manner of biomic raw material but the input of geothermal power, industrial plant and skilled technicians required to do so is hideously large and predicted to be un-scalable to all of Kalgachia for centuries, held back by limited numbers of trained scientists and engineers as well as a constant resource drain to the national defence complex. On the surface, the majority of Kalgachia's motor transport is powered by wood gas obtained from the enormous belt of plantation forest around the national frontier (liquified in refineries for light vehicles, or made in the on-board converters of heavy vehicles). Certain elements of the national infrastructure (the road and rail network, utility-band radio communications, long-range goods distribution etc.) are left wilfully under-developed as too vulnerable to attack, or too useful to an invading enemy in wartime. The obsessively fine-targeted, priority-oriented planning of central economic organs has also left whole sectors undeveloped as 'insufficiently important', left by default to the country's stunted mass of private enterprises or even criminal elements. The tendency of these small, parochially-optimised entities to fill cracks in the Kalgachi standard of living is largely tolerated by the authorities which are centrally instructed to regulate them with as light a hand as possible - again inspired by the all-pervading imperative of national defence, in that a decent standard of living makes it more difficult for hostile foreign powers to buy the submission of Kalgachi citizens (a tactic which Kalgachia's founders had themselves used to magnificent effect in naturalising the country's eastern and western populations).
Academia and Technology
As befits a gnostically-inclined nation which considers the cultivation of knowledge its sole hope of evening the odds against a material universe rigged against it, Kalgachia's education system is extensive and well-developed - largely the legacy of Kalgachia's first Pedagogue General, Ilessa Z. Aerit, and the cult-like following of her holistic vision in the years since she died. It begins at the primary phase, in thousands of Church-run parish schools where Kalgachi children are taught to read, write, identify the principal manifestations of archonic power in the public life of various Micran societies and basic methods of subverting them, and perform simple algebra. This culminates in the Urchagin, a viscerally intense and allegorical retelling of Kalgachia's origin which is intended to instil, at a suitably early age, some sense of historical context and cause in its participants' subsequent 'cultivation'.
With the exception of theological and special-needs education, subsequent phases of learning in Kalgachia are provided directly by the Directorate of Education and Outreach. Students in secondary education are generally streamed into the humanities or sciences at an early stage, although the latter stream retains a full examination of Micran history, the subject being considered so vital that it transcends the constraints of classical study and offers an equally valuable body of precedent in the sciences. It is traditional to examine Shirerithian history in the first year of secondary education, followed by that of Minarboria and eventually Kalgachia with occasional foray into events of other nations such as Nova England and Batavia. Those students streamed into the humanities overlay these studies with a more intensive history covering the entire Benacian continent from its prehistoric origins.
The most gifted entrants to the secondary system are diverted to one of Kalgachia's handful of Gymnasia of which there are two in the city of Oktavyan, one in Lithead and one in Bergburg. Here the classical and scientific streams are applied simultaneously and with a fearsome intensity.
While the Gymnasia retain their students into the collegiate phase, those from other schools are moved on to seperate colleges where the humanities stream begins an immersion into Benacian classical mythology and students in the scientific stream are committed to either a theoretical or vocational path. Those of a more spiritual bent are admitted to one of the monasteries from which Kalgachia's constituent Marches are administered, where they don the sackcloth habit and devote their lives to the absorption of Ketherist theology. From these pious seekers come the ranks of Kalgachi church clergy, plus the occasional aspiring Troglodyte who will inveriably descend among that order's sub-surface covens to continue their esoteric journey thereafter.
Education is nominally compulsory upto this point, although the predominantly-Laqi Lieutenancies of Abrek and Schlepogora do suffer from an intractably high truancy rate as their girls are kept home to perform grinding domestic labour followed by early motherhood and housewifery while the boys succumb to the romantic allure of the shashka and the saddle, running off to gallop about the land with their cossack partisan elders instead of attending school. As a result the literacy rate in these areas remains stubbornly below the national average, reducing the overall national rate into line with neighbouring states which Kalgachia might otherwise have outperformed.
Students continuing from college are admitted to one of Kalgachia's two universities, Oktavyan or Bergburg - the former being the traditional crucible of Kalgachi culture while the latter advances the nation's science and engineering. Here, after suitable period of immersion in the local academic culture, they either settle into postgraduation and eventual tenure or go on to apply themselves in the most important nodes of the Kalgachi bureaucracy.
Within the Directorate of Health and Public Welfare, some provision exists for the residential education of halfwits, cretins, imbeciles, idiots, morons, spasmodics, Jingoloids and other flavours of intellectual disability as well the deranged, the irritably epileptic, the deaf and the blind - the majority of such afflicted individuals being Nezeni by heritage, the result of unforeseen incompatibilies in modified genes arising from that population's abandonment of the strict eugenics practised by their Deep Singer forebears. The majority of staff in Kalgachia's special-needs institutions are Lywallers by heritage, their innate jollity and patience being considered best suited to the care of high-maintenance students. The curriculum of these institutions, modest by necessity, is built around practical measures to recover as much of their students' societal functionality as possible and reduce their burden on state resources.
The educated class of Kalgachia has an unusually high population of scientists and engineers for a country of its size, initially nourished by the learned cadres of &zeter who, with varying levels of volition, migrated to Kalgachia after Minarboria's collapse. Certain achievements in Minarborian technology such as biodiesel propulsion, resilient electronics and rocketry owe themselves to this inheritance, alongside the country's advanced capabilities in underground construction and medicine which draw from the well of Deep Singer experience. These two skillbases have combined to prioritise the location of Kalgachia's most important state and industrial assets in the deepest underground venues, each rated to withstand attack by an orbitally-delivered kinetic penetrator bearing a nuclear warhead in the multi-megaton range.
In recent times, much of Kalgachia's scientific development has pivoted from the development of military technology to the synthesis of life-essential material from Kalgachia's sub-surface geology, with the goal of enabling the underground protectorate of Lapivril to attain a self-sufficiency and independence from the surface world of an extent unseen since the People's Republic of Hell. While the extraction of limitless geothermal power from the mid-Benacian tectonic fault and the production of ultraviolet lighting to mimic the absent rays of Atos have long since been within Kalgachi capability, the synthesis of life-essential material from geological strata in which they are absent had long eluded Kalgachi scientists until one Dr. Eager Churchytopp of the University of Bergburg combined a series of processes utilising alpha particles from abundant sources of Radium-226 in the local granite to effect reliable, in-situ nuclear transmutation of other abundant substances. The discovery of these processes, combined with the developments in the extraction of magmatic hydrogen from deep thermal vents and sub-surface agronomy, won the Lapivril official resourcing from the Kalgachi government and advanced the reputation of Kalgachi physics and chemistry in foreign centres of academic excellence such as Kezan.
Society
Kalgachia's geography, and the historical migrations that have taken place upon it, have made it the meeting point of many Benacian ethnicities. Each have their own quirks of custom, dialect and outlook on life. If any traits can be considered universal in Kalgachia they are a desire for self-reliance, a strangely unpeturbed tenor in the face of grave danger bordering on outright fatalism, a casual directness of tone and a lingering, deep suspicion of Eastern and Northern Benacians - all of these things reinforced by generations of folk wisdom even in the absence of memetic cultivation by the Kalgachi media.
Relations between Kalgachia's ethnic groups are for the most part civil and open-minded - not so much a result of humanist ideals as a general recognition that the survival of each group is absolutely dependent on the preservation of Kalgachia's collective integrity, a message driven hard by central media organs whose content abounds with dire predictions of the penury and foreign vassalage which might result from allowing Kalgachia's constituent populations to be leveraged against each other.
Ethnic Groups
The Lywallers
The Lywallers, contrary to their overly-specific appellation, are descended not only from the Minarborian-era inhabitants of Lywall but also Highbloom and &zeter, these populations having been the most socially proximate to their erstwhile Rossheim sovereigns and inheriting the greater part of the social mores gifted to the world by that famed undead bloodline. As a result they are characterised by an indefatigable jollity and unsophisticated daintiness which occasionally extends into the outright childlike, lending the atmosphere of a kindergarten to even the most formal situations. This is often mistaken for flippancy or intellectual disability - generally to the misfortune of the uninitiated as Lywallers are no less capable of ruthless cunning than any of their fellow Kalgachi, indeed the false sense of security created by their outwardly-cheerful tenor is all the more disturbing when events reveal their true colours.
Having been a favoured class in Minarboria and still celebrating their ancient association with its undead Empress, the Lywallers retain a residual degree of social advantage and can be found throughout Kalgachia, although they are mainly concentrated around the Lieutenancies of Katarsis and Jollity as well as the protectorate of Northbloom. Their innate gift of working well with 'the little ones' and communicating across language barriers has given the Lywallers a disproportionately-dominant presence in the halls of primary education and the diplomatic corps respectively.
The Laqi
The Laqi are an inexplicably persistent community in Southern Benacia, originating in the ill-fated Laqi Free Republic with a sizeable diaspora migrating to eastern Ashkenatza after the former's collapse. Although these polities have long since been swept into the chop yard of history, the Laqi have remained a coherent body of people with a consistent presence in Benacian public life to this day. The Laqi practice a social conservatism verging on tribal backwardness, although their nomadic past has imbued them with an innate wanderlust and a tendency to play as hard as they work. Their reputation as brigands and hard drinkers is mostly deserved, with the comprehensive plunder of Minarboria's fallen Shrublands by their rampaging cossack bands being instrumental to the foundation of Kalgachia as a viable sovereign state. Their most fearless sons continue to be utilised conducting black operations for the Kalgachi military.
The division of wider Laqidom by the borders established during the Benacian Reconquest has led to something of an acceleration in the inter-clan politics and shifting loyalties which have always characterised the race. In particular the ascent of the Republic of Inner Benacia on Kalgachia's southern and eastern frontiers has provoked much debate among the Kalgachi Laqi as to their precise role and power in relation to their foreign cousins. The prevailing conclusion among the Parish jirgas and partisan bands of the Kalgachi east, much advanced and promoted by central government, is that the Laqi of Kalgachia are a breed apart from their lowland neighbours (popularly named the "Green Laqi" in comparison to their "Black" and "Red" counterparts abroad) on account of their mountain environment, their more comfortable standard of living, their better access to basic education and their cultural cross-fertilisation by traditional allies such as the Mishalanski which lends a more slavophilic tenor to their language and customs. This celebration of wealth, culture and a literally more elevated location has been characterised as rank snobbery by the Laqi of other states, an accusation dismissed in turn by their Kalgachi cousins as little more than petulant jealousy.
Kalgachia's Laqi are mostly concentrated in the Lieutenancies of Schlepogora and Abrek, their old Minarborian heartland.
The Nezeni
The Nezeni are genetic relatives of the transhuman, biomantic race known as the Deep Singers. Named for the latter's ancient language which continues to feature in their dialect, the Nezeni came to prominence during the collapse of Minarboria when the greater part of the Deep Singer population were scattered and driven underground by a rogue pathogen known as the Crystal Death. The event effectively destroyed the societal integrity of those few who enjoyed natural immunity and remained on the surface; the loss of so many genesplicers and their broodchambers, on whom the Singers' artificial reproduction process was wholly reliant, provoked the isolated surface population to extreme measures to ensure the survival of their race - namely the reversal of their sequestration by mundane surgical practices so they could reproduce naturally. Such surgeries were hazardous in the conditions of the time, many being performed by hired Yehudi clerics under the misapprehension that the procedure was little different from a circumcision; the absence of the old Deep Singer oversight regarding specific genotypal combinations, aggravated by a certain amount of interbreeding with unmodified humans, also resulted in a high number of gynaecological complications and birth defects which burdened the first generations of the new Nezeni race with a high mortality rate until, over successive generations, their evolution began to select for the more viable specimens. This process also tended to eliminate the extra limbs, tentacles and more insectoid features seen in the true Deep Singers although the Nezeni remain easily identifiable by their silver, blue or green complexion and lizardlike eyes. They also retain certain vestigial advantages such as enhanced hearing in the ultrasonic range, accelerated healing and almost perfect immune function - although their reproductive problems remain sufficiently prevalent that most statistics on the matter are classified secret by the Directorate of Health and Public Welfare. Beyond cursory mentions in the context of family planning advice, the problem is rarely discussed in public but is known to have struck even the most important echelons of Kalgachi society.
As in Minarboria, the Nezeni exert a great influence over the Kalgachi church and by extension the state - the horticultural holism of their ancient belief system, although less viscerally intense than that of their Deep Singer ancestors, remains an integral part of Kalgachi philosophy and theology.
By virtue of their modified genes, the presence of the Nezeni on the Benacian continent is especially irritating to racial-supremacist elements around Benacia. Safety considerations have caused the Nezeni to be barred from service in the DTW diplomatic corps to avoid international incidents and Nezeni troops of the KDF are issued suicide syrettes to prevent their capture and live mutilation. Aside from the predictable revulsion of their kind emanating from the Nationalist-Humanists, the Nezeni are also looked upon with discomfort by the Deep Singers of Lepidopterum to whom their genome represents a chaotic, destructive and ultimately dangerous regression from the iterationally-guided perfection of the past. Calls for the return of the Nezeni to Deep Singer 'cultivation' in order to repair this perceived 'damage' have been resisted by the Kalgachi government, which seeks to homogenise its population toward a single racial identity, and to an extent by the Nezeni themselves who wish to preserve their own distinct heritage.
The social tenor of the Nezeni is characterised by a visceral, almost scandalous sensuality which might have neared the worst excesses of the Froyalaners had it not been tempered with a casual self-contentment rather than promoted aggressively among adjacent cultures. The boundary between self and environment is less defined in Nezeni society - especially in their home territory where they seem in places to integrate seamlessly with the local biome akin to the hunter-gatherers of a forest garden. The Nezeni are also considered to be the undisputed masters of Kalgachi folk music with a heavy emphasis on wind instruments, birdlike rhythm and tonal mobility.
The Nezeni can mainly be found in the Lieutenancy of Lithead which composes the northeastern rim of their Minarborian heartland, although a number of them live among their Deep Singer cousins in Lepidopterum. These areas remain chock full of hazardous flora and fauna and remaining functional, or indeed alive there for any length of time requires an adherence to the various strands of Singer/Nezeni folk tradition which have allowed them, and them alone, to thrive in the biome.
The Siyacho-Ashkenatzi
The Siyacho-Ashkenatzi, or Bergburgers as they are known in Kalgachia, originated in the Ashkenatzan provinces of Volhyria and Porolia. After the collapse of that state and a few intervening centuries of anarchic Kossar warlordery, the area was annexed by Minarboria and the tribal Kohanim of the local people were installed as the basis of a theocratic Shophate known as Siyachia, answering nominally to the Minarborian Empress. After Minarboria's collapse, the mountainous east of Siyachia was annexed by Kalgachia and saw an influx of migrants from the west seeking new oppurtunities in the nascent state. They coalesced around the mountain town of Bergburg, which quickly became the locus of their efforts and lent its name to the surrounding Lieutenancy.
Bergburgers remain mostly concentrated around Bergburg, although a large community of them exists in Oktavyan where they form a disproportionately high number of financiers at the Directorate of Labour and Economic Planning and tenured academics at the Directorate of Education and Outreach. As a community they practise a certain insularity, soaked into them by a centuries-long feedback loop of defensively intensifying religious custom and persecution by ignorant goyim. This body of ancient tradition, originally developed to glorify the original god of the Bergburgers' ancestors, has now accumulated in cultural weight to become an end in itself and survived no less then two full transitions into different belief systems, successfully securing the necessary concessions from their adopted churches to continue observing the ancient mitzvot.
A tense and calumnious relationship exists between the Bergburger community and their Siyacher brethren in the portion of the Siyach subsequently conquered by the UGB, which sponsors its own quasi-theocratic regime in the Governorate.
The Kalgachi
Kalgachi ethnicity is defined in national law as "any combination of Lywaller, Laqi, Nezeni, or Siyacho-Ashkenazi", meaning that in theory - and often in practice - it is possible for two persons to share official Kalgachi ethnicity depite having no common racial heritage. This is not considered especially troublesome in official circles, for whom the objective of forging a single Kalgachi race is secondary to that of diluting and homogenising the cultural heritage attendant upon each of Kalgachia's contributory ethnic groups in order to permanently eradicate seperatist sentiments from the population. A wide variety of official and unofficial incentives exist to accelerate this process, ranging from a statutory preference toward mixed-Kalgachi individuals in employment to the prioritisation of obstetric care for mothers of mixed-Kalgachi offspring [2] A particularly effective tactic has been the positive depiction of mixed-Kalgachi families in television soap operas with an emphasis on career paths, causing the programmes' primary viewership of gossiping grandmothers to relentlessly badger their children to marry across racial boundaries.
Theoretically a Kalgachi carrying blood from all of the country's ethnic groups would be dark-haired in appearance, owing to the overwhelming proportion of their genome originating from the swarthy folk of subtropical south-east Benacia and the Yardistani Isles. The biomantic legacy of the Deep Singers and their Nezeni descendants leaves many ethnic Kalgachis with a very slight greenish, bluish or iridescent skin hue, accompanied by a glossy sheen which is often mistaken for a sign of illness.
Although schooled in the art of humility before lesser races, the social advantages enjoyed by the ethnic Kalgachi have furnished them with a paternal attitude with regard to their fellow peoples, readily filling the void left by the demise of the nannying Minarborian aristocracy and painting those outside their well-appointed class as pitiable souls in need of charity - or, in the horticultural language of the elite, sickly specimens in need of "grafting." Although this is less pronounced around the Nezeni or the Lywallers, many ethnic Kalgachi in the east of the country consider it their personal mission to rescue their Laqi neighbours from the culturally-ingrained creed of rampant corruption and banditry which has been the latter's birthright since the days of the Free Republic. The success of this wistful mission, despite some progress in metropolitan areas like Schlepogora city, remains woefully partial - not least due to the tendency of mixed Kalgachi of Laqi descent to marry back into full Laqi bloodlines. Elsewhere, however, the demographic expansion of the mixed Kalgachi in proportion to their single-race counterparts is occurring more quickly - the group became a plurality of the national population in 215 AL and the more optimistic surveys project them to become an absolute majority as soon as 230 AL.
The ethnic Kalgachi are disproportionately represented in the sub-surface portions of Kalgachia's urban centres, regardless of whether or not they are descended from burrowing Deep Singer bloodlines. The reasons for this are not fully understood - the most popular theory in academic circles is the internalisation of a suggestive link between their 'master race' status and the image of sub-surface development as a source of religious purity and national pride.
Minor Groups
Between the country's foundation and 200 AL, Kalgachia was host to two notable immigrant populations: the Froyalanish and Mishalanski. Ironically both populations were displaced from their respective homelands by related events, namely the periods immediately before and after the Auspicious Occasion in Shireroth which saw the eventual end of Froyalanish rule in that nation.
First came the Mishalanski, escaping Froyalanish persecution - many of these were organised and armed by the then-nascent Kalgachi government into the Konkordskaya Bratva, a genocidally-inclined militia who would go on to assist in the Froyalaners' subsequent deposition in Shireroth. Those who remained established a small population in Kalgachia's northeast where, over the course of several generations, they were assimilated into the neighbouring Laqi population [3]
After the Auspicious Occasion, during a time of intense infrastructural development in Kalgachia, a large but conspicuously unrecorded number of Froyalaners were imported from Shireroth as bonded labourers, of whom some two million survived to be emancipated in 161 AL. All were sterilised upon arrival, allegedly to prevent them gaining an ethnic foothold for cultural exploitation by the Storish in the far future. In Kalgachia the Froyalanish formed a class of unpaid menial workers similar to the undead 'zombots' of Minarboria. Their service ranged from arduous, often fatal manual labour to more sedate work as office clerks and domestic servants, these roles broadly determined by the difference in physical brawn inherent between the male and female genders. After emancipation Kalgachia's Froyalanish population were released from bondage and paid a minimum wage, although the practice of their memetically-virulent religion remained a capital crime and their sterilisation caused them to die off within a generation of labour imports being ceased in 164 AL.
Politics
Although not a pluralist state, Kalgachia is nonetheless host to a wide variety of political opinions forged by ancestral leanings, personal experience, national and international events, historical interest, individual interpretation of official doctrines and the osmotic effect of common gossip. Some of the Kalgachi population's more notable schools of thought are:
Proprietism
Proprietism is an adherence to the sum total of official orthodoxies put forth by the Church of Kalgachia and the Directorate of Education and Outreach. Proprietists, found most strongly in the middle and deeper echelons of government, advocate balance between - and eventual synthesis of - all other political beliefs. Proprietist sentiment is predominant among the mixed-Kalgachi population.
Shrubbitarianism
The Shrubbitarians consider it the goal of the individual to be as inoffensive as possible in the spirit of Minarbor, the mild-mannered shrub worshipped in Ketherism. Quietness, politeness, pastel colours and gentle gestures are the Shrubbitarians' creed, but far from being dour they advocate a sensible jollity in daily life as promoted by Minarbor's fellow Ketherist Salvator, Lord Toastypops. Shrubbitarianism is popular among the Lywallers of central and northwestern Kalgachia and at all levels of the Kalgachi clergy. Many Shrubbitarians believe in the 'old creed' of Minarbor's eternal supremacy among deities - putting them at odds with Ketherist doctrine - and they generally regard the Minarborian era with a wistful fondness.
A seperate strain of Shrubbitarianism exists in Northbloom where the personage of Minarbor is substituted for that of Mondo Etzeterra.
Cryptocracy
The Cryptocrats are the strongest proponents of Temporal Secessionism and its related concepts, advocating the perceptual distortion of every facet of Kalgachi life by an obscurantist veil of some kind until it is so bewildering to hostile forces that it becomes invisible. Cryptocratic ideas find their natural home among the Troglodyti, the Prefects, the intelligence organs of the Kalgachi Defence Force and the certain quarters of Church of Kalgachia (mainly the Pesakhnik tendency).
Commercantism
Commercantists hold that a comfortable material living standard is the principal glue that holds Kalgachi society together and protects it from the competing temptations of the Tumultuous Wastes. Mainly found within the DLEP and the deeper echelons of the unitary and church business sectors, the Commercantists advocate an entrepreneurial spirit in the individual and active foreign relations to stimulate trade.
Laqism
The Laqists advocate the preservation of the Laqi language and way of life (typically the resistance of state power in favour of traditional clan politics) and the political union of all Laqi peoples.
Yehudism
The Yehudists advocate the preservation of the ancient Yehudi bloodlines inherited from Ashkenatza but are more willing than the Laqists to adopt a mask of conformity within wider Kalgachi society. The more militant Yehudists consider those outside their chosen bloodlines to be lesser peoples whom can be freely deceived, exploited or assailed, and view their incorporation within Kalgachia as little more than a sham to be maintained as long as it is societally advantageous to them.
Hypernationalism
The Hypernationalists hold that the application of military force, or at least military organisation, is the purest manifestation of the Ketherist imperative of human agency. They cite numerous historical precedents in arguing that displays of strength before the celestial archons, and their agents who drive Kalgachia's rival powers on Micras, are the only language to which the latter forces are truly responsive. Hypernationalism is naturally popular within the Prefects, the Kalgachi Defence Force and the immense partisan formations of the Church of Kalgachia.
The Hypernationalists support the essentially corporatist character of Kalgachi central government and hold a grudging admiration for such authoritarian societies as Jingdao and the Unified Governorates of Benacia. They are extremely supportive of the homogenisation of Kalgachia's ethnic groups into a single unbreakable whole.
Sixism
Sixism is support for the expansionist Sixth Law of the Garden, as advocated by the Church of Minarboria but repudiated by the Church of Kalgachia. Almost exclusively found among the Deep Singers and Nezeni, Sixist sentiment is strongest in Lepidopterum. Sixists generally hold that the mix of unmodified and Deep Singer genes seen in the Nezeni people is a degenerate accident of history and that such individuals must be genetically 'repaired' and re-assimilated into the pure Deep Singer genome.
The more enthusiastic Sixists advocate the eventual assimilation of all Kalgachi peoples into the Deep Singer genome while the most extreme - named the Doronists after the notorious Shirerithian-era bioterrorist, Doron Se - advocate the forced displacement or assimilation of all life in the universe by engineered Deep Singer lifeforms[4]
Calendar
Kalgachia uses the Anno Libertatis calendar - a slowing of the Minarborian Anno Fruticis calendar by a factor of ten (with 1450 AF rendered as 145 AL, for example) devised to reduce the Temporal Haemorrhaging factor against the ascendant Ab Nortone count from ~30:1 to a more comfortable ~3:1. Like its Minarborian predecessor, the Anno Libertatis calendar takes the emergence of the shrub Minarbor (July 8th, 2013 Gregorian) as its start point, and retains the old calendar's treatment of this point as the zeroth year rather than the first. (A rather flawed year converter can be found here; use the bottom calendar for selection).
The sub-year Minarborian calendar - pegged to the Gregorian and utilised in narrative terms as a seasonal window into the appropriate Anno Libertatis year, has been adopted in Kalgachia wholesale. It has a five day week consisting of:
Helloday
Pleaseday
Rustleday
Thanksday
Byeday
A given date will always fall on a given day of the week, as said week is synchronised to a pattern of months as follows:
Winterise (30 days - 22 Dec to 20 Jan) starting on a Helloday
Winterhigh (30 days - 21 Jan to to 19 Feb) starting on a Helloday
Winterfall (29 days - 20 Feb to 20 Mar) starting on a Helloday
Springrise (31 days - 21 Mar to 20 Apr) starting on a Byeday
Springhigh (31 days - 21 Apr to 21 May) starting on a Helloday
Springfall (31 days - 22 May to 21 Jun) starting on a Pleaseday
Summerise (31 days - 22 Jun to 22 Jul) starting on a Rustleday
Summerhigh (31 days - 23 Jul to 22 Aug) starting on a Thanksday
Summerfall (31 days - 23 Aug to 22 Sep) starting on a Byeday
Harvestrise (30 days - 23 Sep to 22 Oct) starting on a Helloday
Harvesthigh (30 days - 23 Oct to 21 Nov) starting on a Helloday
Harvestfall (30 days - 22 Nov to 21 Dec) starting on a Helloday
Earth's leap day of February 29th is rendered specially as Shudderday, 9½ Winterfall.
In full, a date such as Sunday July 2nd, 2017 would equate to Rustleday Summerise 11th, 145 AL.
References
- ^ A name allegedly chosen by an official who had recently fled from the Faculty of Benacian Classics at the University of &zeter, in homage to an obscure tribal chieftain from pre-Shirerithian Goldshire.
- ^ Or darker, more proactive measures - rumours exist an informal programme by DHPW eugenicists, usually in Laqi parishes with a high banditry rate, to occasionally terminate non-mixed foetuses with microwave beam apparatus built into ultrasound scanners. Folk avoidance of DHPW medical services arising from this rumour has caused the rate of stillbirths from undiscovered obstetric complications to rise in such areas, such a fortuitous double-bind leading some to wonder if the rumour was started by the national medical establishment itself.
- ^ this conveniently explains the presence of overly-Slavic tendencies in Kalgachia's Laqi population, whose original ancestors were considerably more Turkic in nature. Wink wink.
- ^ It is worth noting that Doronist talking points tend to be emphasised in Benacian media outlets during periods of tension, being presented, in a heavily curated form, to the masses as the true and authentic voice of the "hidden masters" of Kalgachia. Similarly, during the periodic interludes of pragmatic coexistence, the tame commentariat of the controlled media will deftly shift their narratives towards an appreciation of the Garden's martial capacity as the "Benchmark Enemy" of the Unified Governorates.
